32 replies to this topic

[Ari]

Lolly, the whole company isn't coming over,   just the three dancers who do Monotones.

[Patricia]

After seeing DIM LUSTRE in October with Ethan, I would love to see what he would do as UNDERTOW's murderer and PILLAR OF FIRE's seducer.  He has a dark side worth developing.

Also, I have never seen Tudor's ROMEO AND JULIET.  For years there has been talk about a revival.  It would be tragic if it ended up as another 'lost ballet.'

The rest of my wish list includes AT MIDNIGHT (which BalletTech is reviving this season), HARBINGER, DRINK TO ME WITH ONLY THINE EYES, SYMPHONIC VARIATIONS,  THE MOOR'S PAVANE, and the Robbins LES NOCES.

[sylvia]

Ari, how strange! Why just 3 and what's happening in March?

Anyway I know we just saw them at the RB but I'm still envious of the NY audiences who are getting The Dream and La Fille. I would LOVE to see Ferri's Tatiana. And Stiefel and Corella as Colas.

[Ari]

Sylvia, the Kennedy Center's Opera House will be closed for renovation for one year beginning in December.  Therefore, the ballet series is going to have to move to other venues.  Most performances will take place at a smaller theater that would not house big ballets very well, so they can't present the big companies of the world in full force.  As a sop to their subscribers' expectations, they are staging what they call a festival for two weeks in March that will feature dancers from a number of major companies performing chamber-sized ballets.  In addition to the Royal (or three members of it), the "festival" will include dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet, ABT, Miami City Ballet, the Kirov, and another company whose name I've forgotten.

[Michael]

Eric Bruhn's production of La Sylphide is in ABT's repertory and I would like to continue to see it performed.  It is not the best production, but it is adequate and Sylphide is such a beautiful ballet.

[glebb]

Michael, might that be the production of La Sylphide that I saw ABT perform at NYState Theatre in 1970?

I remember being excited by the witches flying on broom sticks.

[Manhattnik]

Quote

Originally posted by sylvia
Anyway I know we just saw them at the RB but I'm still envious of the NY audiences who are getting The Dream and La Fille. I would LOVE to see Ferri's Tatiana. And Stiefel and Corella as Colas.

I would love to see anybody's Tatiana in The Dream, actually. And particularly the consternation when the silly girl turns up missing from Onegin.

[Mme. Hermine]

ROTFL!

[cargill]

Or what about Tatania turning up in Onegin looking for that donkey!

[Alexandra]

You know, guys,  the two names are easy to confuse, not to mention the possibilities of typos.  

Sylvia, it does seem strange for ABT to be doing twice as much Ashton in a season as the Royal Ballet, isn't it?

[cargill]

Alexandra, I hope no one was thinking I was being critical!  The thought just struck me as funny.  I knew exactly what was meant.

[Alexandra]

Thanks, Mary.  I'm sure no one meant to be critical.  But I wanted to stop the thread from being focused on this, and I really wasn't sure how it would be interpreted.

[Michael]

I'm not sure it was Bruhn's production of Sylphide you saw at ABT in 1970 Glebb -- Now that you mention it, the Sylphide and her confreres (or consoeurs)  fly in the Bruhn production, but I do not remember any broomsticks.  It is played rather straight.

I saw the Bruhn production at ABT two seasons ago in NY when they gave it three or four performances -- The Sylph was either Julie Kent or Yan Chen, and James was either Belotserkofsky (sic, spelling?) or Malakhov.  Kent was the superior Sylph and both Jamess were very good.  The reel, above all, was well performed.  The production generally suffered from a loss of (or lack of) important detail.  And It was never quite made clear who and what the Sylph was and why and how James's effort to possess her and to know her, and his lack of appreciation for the  freedom and otherness of her nature, inevitably caused her destruction.  But even diminished in that way, it was still a beautiful ballet and better to see than 9/10ths of what I see on that stage and elsewhere.

[Victoria Leigh]

The witches flew on broomsticks in the Lander production, which was staged in '64 I think. They might have still been doing that one in '70, Glebb.

[Alexandra]

I'm sure they were, Victoria.  The flying on broomsticks were one of Lander's comic inventions put in in the 1930s -- like making Gurn an old, red-haired clown instead of a younger man -- I'm told.